Infringing copyright law on a book if you photocopy 5% or less of it.?

[briancbyrne]

Hi,

Ive been told that you are not infringing copyright law on a book if you photocopy 5% or less of it.

Can anyone confirm or deny this?

thanks

Brian

 

[Sunny]

Re: copyright - question about use

Its a hard to answer. Think it comes down to the concept of fair dealing. I think with regard to books, you can copy for private study or non-commercial research, one chapter or 5% of the book, whichever is longer. There are other limits dealing with short books, journals etc and I don't think the amount allowed is defined in law but the 5% is generally acccepted as common practice.

 

[WaterSprite]

Re: copyright - question about use

See [broken link removed]

The 5% rule of thumb only applies (as far as I know) if you are within one of the "fair dealing" exceptions. If you are not using the work for educational or review purposes, then there's no minimum on the amount you can copy (again, as far as I know). I don't believe that photocopying 5% of a book (which is fairly substantial, let's face it) would fall into the de minimis exception.

Wikipedia blurb (with the usual caveats about Wikipedia) is here (talking about UK copyright law, which is v similar to Irish)

Sprite